NASA Chief: Ultimate Goal Is “Boots On The Ground On Mars”

391621 01: FILE PHOTO: Frosty white ice clouds and swirling orange dust storms float above a vivid rusty landscape on Mars, June 26, 2001 in this sharpest view ever obtained by an Earth-based telescope. The Earth-orbiting Hubble telescope made this photograph when Mars was approximately 43 million miles (68 million kilometers) from Earth - its closest approach to our planet since 1988. (Photo by NASA/Getty Images)

NASA mission to capture an asteroid is just a prelude to a manned mission to Mars. (Getty Images)

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER (CBS Tampa) – Capturing an asteroid is all well and good, says NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, but it shouldn’t distract from the real goal…a manned mission to Mars.

Speaking about the asteroid mission, Bolden said his main focus is on going to the Red Planet and staying there.

“The ultimate thing is to put boots on the ground on Mars, and that’s not just to do a touch and go,” he told a forum. “It’s to live there one of these days.”

The space agency’s Asteroid Initiative is a bold mission aimed at moving a small asteroid, or a piece of a large one, closer to Earth orbit by the year 2525.

Redirecting an asteroid would involve sending a robotic spacecraft, snagging the big rock and hauling it to an orbit near the Moon.

Once there, it can serve as a staging ground to test new propulsion systems and maybe even serve as a platform for celestial mining operations.

It may also serve as a staging area for future space exploration.

The ultimate goal of this agency right now when it comes to human spaceflight is to put humans on Mars. That’s hard. That is really hard. We need a proving ground to develop some of the technologies and everything else,” Bolden said.

NASA scientists have identified about a dozen potential asteroid candidates for the mission.